Stan’s Favorite Museums #2: Virtual Tour of the Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum is another museum promoted from the top twenty to the top ten because of its virtual experience.  It has moved to new, larger quarters at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd in Mountain View, California.  It’s about  a half hour south of SFO (once you get your rental car) or fifteen minutes northeast of SJC or Levis Stadium. 

From the museum’s home page, click visit>exhibits and scroll down to Revolution, click on Revolution, scroll down again and click on Virtual Tour to start.   If you have difficulty navigating the tour, see the suggestion* below.  At each station, I recommend using the mouse to rotate the image and see other nearby artifacts such as the NTDS display to the right of the SAGE console.  Once you finish your tour, you may want to explore topics in the history of computing/calculating by going back to https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/revolution, clicking on Online Exhibit, clicking on Topics at the top and select slide shows, some with embedded video, of the history of a topic that interests you.  These are not virtual tours, but many of them are interesting and all of them are informative.

*The tour has 31 stations; in the top right corner of the screen there will be a number n/31 that tells you which station you are viewing and arrows to move forward or backward on the tour.  In the bottom left corner, there will be an inset with the name of the station, a play arrowThe tour has 31 stations; in the top right corner of the screen there will be a number n/31 that tells you which stop you are viewing and arrows to move forward or backward on the tour.  In the bottom left corner, there will be an inset with the name of the station and a play arrow.  Click the play arrow and the show images pop up for an a/v description of the station.